Engineers Week: Exotic Interactions with Light and Sound in Metamaterials with Broken Symmetries

The Electrical and Engineering Department presents speaker Andrea Alù for this year’s Engineers Week events.

Location: This event is virtual, free, and open to the NU community.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://northeastern.zoom.us/j/94710036507?pwd=RWFqbmtPMit0RktsSXpCZE1Fd3VmZz09

Passcode: 0000

Meeting ID: 947 1003 6507
One tap mobile
+13017158592,,94710036507# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,94710036507# US (Chicago)

Exotic Interactions with Light and Sound in Metamaterials with Broken Symmetries

Andrea Alù Founding Director and Einstein Professor at the Photonics Initiative, CUNY Advanced Science Research Center

Andrea Alù
Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York
Physics Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, City College of New York
85 St. Nicholas Terrace, New York, NY 10031, U.S.A.
aalu@gc.cuny.edu, http://alulab.org

In this talk, I discuss our recent research findings in nano-optics, electromagnetics and acoustics, showing how suitably tailored meta-atoms and arrays of them enable new phenomena to manipulate light, radio-waves and sound. I discuss venues to largely break Lorentz reciprocity and realize isolation without the need of a magnetic bias, based on broken time-reversal symmetry induced by mechanical motion, spatio-temporal modulation and/or nonlinearities. I also discuss how broken symmetries in space and space-time provide the opportunity to induce topological order in metamaterials. Another class of metamaterials based on broken symmetries are parity-time symmetric media, which are asymmetric in space, but symmetric upon parity and time inversion, and can enhance the exotic response of metamaterials beyond the limitations of passive systems. In the talk, I will discuss the impact of these concepts from basic science to technology, from classical waves to quantum phenomena.

Andrea Alù is the Founding Director and Einstein Professor at the Photonics Initiative, CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. He received his Laurea (2001) and PhD (2007) from the University of Roma Tre, Italy, and, after a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until Jan. 2018. Dr. Alù is a Fellow of NAI, IEEE, AAAS, OSA, SPIE and APS, and has received several scientific awards, including the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from DoD, the ICO Prize in Optics, the NSF Alan T. Waterman award, the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal.

Download Flyer (pdf)